Archinect - News

The Broad taps Diller Scofidio + Renfro again for major expansion

2024-03-27T18:33:00-04:00

Big news for architecture and art fans alike coming out of Los Angeles today, where The Broad just announced plans for a major expansion project to the tune of $100 million.

The reveal of the new proposal, which will reportedly increase the available gallery space by 70%, comes nearly ten years after the existing building opened to much fanfare on Downtown LA's Grand Avenue arts and culture corridor in 2015 to allow free public access to the vast art collection of philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad.

For the design of the expansion, the museum has commissioned the original architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) again, whose initial renderings hint at a continuation of their "veil and vault" concept.

"The exterior of the expansion echoes the surface appearance of the vault — as if this core had been exposed and 'unveiled' — symbolically expressing The Broad’s commitment to access while playfully inverting the visual vocabulary of the current building," the architects describe...

Catherine Opie will join Christopher Hawthorne and Carolina A. Miranda at The Broad for a discussion on memory and public space

2022-01-19T18:38:00-05:00

Who gets to be remembered in a city, and why? That will be one of the questions on the dais when artist Catherine Opie joins current and former LA Times architecture critics Christopher Hawthorne and Carolina A. Miranda for a conversation on the topic at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles tomorrow evening.

The conversation will take as its focus the works of Opie as they tie-in with the mission of the city’s Civic Memory Working Group that Hawthorne helped found. The museum will also present Opie’s recently-acquired work monument/monumental, which documents a 2020 road trip from Richmond, Virginia and the attempt by Black Lives Matters activists there to reclaim a noteworthy statue that depicted Robert E. Lee. Opie’s work will be presented in the context of how commemoration can best be processed through the built environment in the 21st century using lessons from the past as a critical guide.

From left to right: Catherine Opie, Christopher Hawthorne, and Carolina Miranda. Image cour...

Billionaire business man, art collector and philanthropist, Eli Broad, passes away at 87

2021-05-05T18:05:00-04:00

Eli Broad, a businessman and philanthropist whose vast fortune, extensive art collection and zeal for civic improvement helped reshape the cultural landscape of Los Angeles, died on Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 87. [...] Mr. Broad (pronounced “brode”) made billions in the home-building and insurance businesses and spent a significant part of his wealth trying to make Los Angeles one of the world’s pre-eminent cultural capitals.

Broad is best known for his extensive philanthropic work focused on public education, scientific and medical research, and the visual and performing arts. He, along with his wife Edythe, has given more than $4 billion to support these efforts. Their work has placed them among the leading philanthropists in the United States.

His lasting legacy on Los Angeles is considerable with work including the creation and preservation of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the creation of the Broad, a $140 million art museum that he financed himself that features his collection of more than 2,000 contemporary works, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, in which he granted $50 million to complete the project.

In recent years, Broad has dedicated a majority of his time to his philanthropic work via his foundations, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and The Broad Art Foundation. With assets of $2.4 billion, they advocate for public education reform and promote the revitalization of Los Ang...

LA's Grand Ave to get a color makeover

2017-08-23T12:43:00-04:00

The Broad announced today that it will present a new work from Venezuelan-born artist Carlos Cruz-Diez (b. 1923), in collaboration with the Cruz-Diez Art Foundation. Couleur Additive has been commissioned by The Broad as part of the Getty Initiative, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California.

Similar public installation done by the artist for Miami Art Basel, 2013

Installation of the public artwork will take place on four crosswalks at the intersection of West Second Street and Grand Avenue from Sept. 1 through Sept. 3. The work can be experienced by the public beginning Sept. 5, 2017 and will be on view into 2018. As part of the installation, and in order to further deepen the project’s ties to the Grand Avenue arts community, high school students from the nearby Ramon C. Cor...

"Its skin feels hermetic and overwrought"

2015-12-04T12:45:00-05:00

But overall the Broad is a disappointment, and the ways in which it fails are more than a little concerning. Its incoherence, its poor urbanism and its unoriginality suggest that the transition from critics to makers may have DS + R stumped...The Broad’s failures of urban design are its biggest and most disappointing surprise.

Sarah Williams Goldhagen pens a critique of Diller Scofidio + Renfro's The Broad.

Leading up to its September-20 opening, Christopher Hawthorne reviews the new Broad museum

2015-08-31T14:15:00-04:00

The elements of the Broad that have been most closely scrutinized or most often reworked, in fact, are the most uneven. It is only in the relative shadows — in the peripheral or easily overlooked spaces, or in the rooms added or enlarged late in the design process — that the architecture of the museum really comes to life.

Editor's Picks #421

2015-06-24T09:24:00-04:00

Amelia Taylor-Hochberg penned What makes an artless museum?, which reviewed the February Sky-lit event/preview of the new Broad Museum. Therein she argues that it provided "an opportunity for the architecture to be treated as a relational art object, but not so it could be handled with velvet gloves". Chris Teeter commented "great article, it's worth 2 or 3 reads…" Donna Sink wrote "A meaty essay...on the Broad Museum (meat, contraceptive sponges, art, raw spectacle: it's a big topic"

Plus, Julia Ingalls explored the Role of Software vs. Vision in Architectural Employment. Derek Kaplan thought it was a "Great article on a topic that needs more discussion."

News

Charles Correa, named "India’s Greatest Architect" by RIBA, died at 84. jla-x eulogized "He was pretty great. I studied his residential developments extensively as a student...He will be missed".

Despite recovering from several major surgeries for cancer, Tadao Ando spoke with NHK World about; recent projects, the durability of...

Archinect Sessions Episode #17: "From the 101 to the 60 to the 10 to the 111"

2015-02-19T14:20:00-05:00

Far away from the snowscapes peppering the rest of the country, the salt flats and dry martinis of Palm Springs exists in a time and place apart. An original enclave of midcentury modernism, Palm Springs has been able to preserve that heritage thanks in large part to Palm Springs Modernism Week, a series of events, lectures and tours whose proceeds go straight back into local architectural preservation and advocacy.

On this episode, we discuss Palm Springs' modernism in the midst of the city's generational transition, and feature a conversation Paul and Amelia had with PSMOD board member, Mark Davis. We also check in on another (contested) southern Californian icon – the Broad Museum, which opened for a one-day public sneak peek last Sunday.

As always, you can send us your architectural legal issues, comments or questions via twitter #archinectsessions, email or call us at (213) 784-7421.

Listen to episode seventeen of Archinect Sessions, "From the 101 to the 60 to the 10 to the 111" :...

So what's new at the Broad?

2015-02-16T14:44:00-05:00

Architect Elizabeth Diller [...] stood on the Grand Avenue sidewalk Friday morning in front of the Broad museum, which she designed with her New York firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and is set to open Sept. 20. Was she giving an architectural preview? Doing damage control? Trying to regain some influence over the narrative of the museum’s construction, which has been beset by delays, fabrication problems and legal wrangling? The answer seemed to be some combination of the three.

Previously

DS+R's Broad Museum set to open on Sept. 20, with a Feb. 15 preview

2015-02-05T15:30:00-05:00

The opening art display in September will offer an array of greatest hits from the more than 2,000 pieces the Broads have amassed. The show will range through some 60 years of post-World War II art, arranged in "predominantly chronological" order from the 1950s to a recently acquired massive video installation created in 2012.

For $10, you can get a one-day not-so-sneak preview in the museum on February 15.

Previously:

Is The Broad Museum's newly unveiled facade living up to its renderings?

The Broad Kinda Sorta Has an Opening Date: Fall 2015

Los Angeles cultural boom gives city’s artists spaces they can call home

Eli Broad’s Art Showcase in Los Angeles, Still Unfinished, Sues Over Delays

Eli Broad's art museum, designed by DS+R, to open in late 2014 and will offer free admission

Is The Broad Museum's newly unveiled facade living up to its renderings?

2015-01-02T18:31:00-05:00

The facade of Bunker Hill's The Broad museum was officially unveiled this morning as workers removed the last of the exterior scaffolding, and things are not looking quite as originally envisioned. The design, by starchitects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, was originally advertised as an "innovative veil" that will activate "two-way views that connect the museum and the street"; today it's been updated to be, well, a bit less innovative.

For comparison - the rendered promise:

Schools shuffle and museums move forward: Weekly News Round-Up for October 27, 2014

2014-11-03T20:29:00-05:00

Friday, October 31:

New Plan for Architecture School at Wright Foundation: Facing the loss of its accreditation in 2017, the school is considering independent incorporation in order to continue operating.

Thursday, October 30:

Archinect's Lexicon: "Anthropocene": Recognizing that "Architecture notoriously appropriates and invents new language – sometimes to make appeals, sometimes to fill conceptual gaps, sometimes nonsensically", Archinect's new series will create a lexicon of (mostly new) discursive architectural terms.

Wednesday, October 29:

Relocation or Adaptation: São Paulo Nears Collapse as Drought Continues: Partially due to climate change and deforestation, major reservoirs are dangerously low and cities in São Paulo are beginning to go dry.
Snøhetta to take over SF development project near Civic Center: The condo design originally was given to Richard Meier, and may involve relocating the adjacent subway stop at Civic Center in downtown San Francisco.
The Broad Kinda Sorta Has an...